Another Metal Enterprises release...maybe even more insane than Killer Fox, but surprisingly listenable, go figure. Still, it's just not very good except for a laugh...and even then your better off with that Red Foxx album I posted a while back (ol' Red is a "Killer" Foxx after all, hehehe).

Cold mechanical riffing of Pestilence Spheres, vox of a Doty + Russell Andersson (beyond excellent)...in parts baroque exercises in staccato ride cymbal athleticism in part break your neck thrash. The confusional song structures make for what should be a strange and alienating experience, but to the credit of these Dutch gentleman, they played with fire and came out with nary a singe on their aquanet encrusted pompadours. What are u fighting for?

Saturday, January 28, 2012

I'm not big into dark ambient, but there are a few artists that intrigue me...Brighter Death Now, Lustmord, Coil, Endura. I'm no expert that's for sure. Despite my limited knowledge, I know what I like, and Gruntsplatter I like. This project is the brainchild of Scott Candey of WormGear and CrionicMind fame (check out his blog too). Despite the somewhat bleak packaging, this is a pretty lush sounding recording, headphones definitely required. Lush, but dark for sure...suffocating really. The amount of textures being layered upon each other is unreal. This is really good tripping music if you still do that sort of thing haha. Mastered by Robert Rich, that's probably why it sounds so fucking good.

Norway's mysterious Organ were an incredibly gifted group that presaged the sound that Ved Buens Ende would morph into with Virus. 2003's Apoplexy In Six Parts is sort of a missing link between those two bands (sonically at least, not personnel wise). Very cool instrumentation...there'll be a convoluted clean guitar passage going on and just some incessant blasting underneath. This is actually really similar to what DHG did on Supervillain Outcast. No vox really, but occasionally some disturbed samples will make an appearance (fellatio, Donald Duck?) Definitely one of the forgotten gems of weirdo Norwegian black metal, and an important step forward for the post black metal genre.

Friday, January 27, 2012

HARSH black metal from this mysterious UK enigma who goes by the moniker Kwim. Rough Musick absolutely sizzles, dissecting the psyche into fragments...an all to appropriate experiment in this day and age. Sometimes I feel like this album looks goddamit...FUUUCK, sometimes I feeel like this SOUNDS!!

On Feb 20, 2008, Matthias Schoorman (aka Karathron Carpe Noctem's vocalist) strangled a long-time friend to death, chopped her head off with a machete and set her headless body on fire. Apparently while he was in the midst of all this he was documenting it in real time on an internet forum...you can check it out if you want.
Schoormann then crashed his car into oncoming traffic during a chase with authorities (the girl's severed head was later found in a bag in the car).

At any rate, Carpe Noctem's debut is a very enjoyable raw melodic black metal affair with absolutely insane vocals, of course I guess that goes without saying.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Hyperblazingtechnical Symphonic Christian "black" metal. Yeah, go ahead and call it white metal if you dare...white metal christian anarchy actually. This is some really bizarre stuff, coming across like a lo-fi Diabolical Masquerade mixed with a drunken Aletheian. Is it any wonder that they're Dutch?? I found this over at an extreme christian metal blog of which there are a quite a few. There truly are blogs for everything I suppose! Even if a lot of the good ones are going under RIP.

Old school experimental death metal from Mexico. Both the Cyber Death demo from '90 and Souls Vortex ep from '92 are absolutely strange eerie chilling death metal with an atmosphere like no other...and Souls Vortex has one of the most awesome death metal covers ever, definitely one of my favorites anyway! I mean the fuckin zombies/aliens are wearing bowties, vomitting blood, pounding on an eviscerated man's ribcage and one is using it's own spinal column as a saxophone. About sums up the musick perfectly!!

Monday, January 23, 2012

This just might be one of the greatest forgotten Tech/Prog albums to come out of the good ol' US of A (or maybe anywhere for that matter). The Bros. Grimm released this their lone full length back in 1990, and to say Helm's Deep is on par with Watchtower's Control and Resistance or Fate's Awaken The Guardian is not farfetched. It's truly hard to fathom how an album like this goes pretty much unrecognized for well over 20 years. If you are a fan of prog you need to dl this right now for the bass playing alone, cuz jesus the bass goes OFF! The closest comparison as far as bass insanity might just be Spiral Architect's A Sceptic's Universe, definitely an influence on ol' Norberg I would say. When I first found out about this album, I must've listened to vs. about 10x in a row. The middle section of that song...just holy SHIT!!! In fact, every song is so dense with memorable riffs that you will absolutely feel compelled to listen to each and every single one of these songs AT LEAST that many times.

Super obscure and otherworldly power metal from Agent Steel vocalist John Cyriis recorded after they broke up for the first time. Wicked Wisdom indeed might be the worst thing ever, but this might just be the best.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Been listening to this awesome jazz on a fairly regular basis since I found out about it. Swings hard with lots of skrees and skronks, bleeps and blops. Evans is a fairly young guy too. Hope to hear alot more from him and this quintet.

Pounding black metal with a unique atmosphere. Has a little of that Symbolist cinematic flavor of Smohalla and Ruins of Beverast paired with the wrist slicing undertones of Bethlehem...play this one to get your Verdunkadunk goin'.

Scathing German excellence that will freeze your soul while it warms your heart. Features some of the best sproinging jew harp abuse that I've heard in a metal context since Part III of Taake's Over Bjoergvin Graater Himmerk!!

Boy that Zeitgeister, they really can do no wrong, can they? Be it Island or Valborg, Ekpyrosis or Woburn House, everything they put out is of high quality. On this debut from '03, the Klabautaboyz do a great job at updating the epic sound of vintage Enslaved (Frost and Vikingligr in particular) with just enough tasteful Maidenesque guitar flourishes to keep thing interesting. Definitely one of my favorite Zeitgeister releases, and sure to become one of yours too.

Check out these new pictures of Rob Darken acting a nut. That guy sure knows how to have a good time...what's he battling there, some kind of mythical antelope? Damn I'd love to do some shrooms with that guy, talk about a hoot!

If someone were to ask me who the originators of pornogrind were, well I might just have to point them in the direction of this hot little number here. The Meatshits' debut album from '93 isn't OTT technical with guttural vomit vox and pig squeals like you'd associate with today's pornogrind...this is more in the vein of the patented mincecore death of Belgium's prolific Agathocles (of course a complete 180 from the Belgian's thematically). Fun stuff and waaaay better than anything Lividity ever did. You better have this pumpin' through your earbuds while you nail that whore in the port-a-john (or cemetery, whatever the case may be :).

(From"Hogan'sHeroes",theTVseries)A pretentiouspieceofequipmentthatactuallyservesnouseful purpose.Usuallyusedtodescribeone'sleastfavouritepieceof computerhardware.
One of Fudgeworthy's finest. Gonkulator was a blackgrind noise/sludge holocaust specializing in sounds of brown. Much like it's namesake, I don't know the actual purpose of this band other than to terrorize your earholes...I guess that's a good enough reason for making music as any.

As an interesting aside, Baron von Gonkulator (the gentleman on the far right) is non other than the Mad Arab of Goat Thrower fame! Why Fudgeworthy didn't snap up Goat Thrower I have no idea, they certainly would have fit right in with their stable of "artists". I can only assume they didn't quite have that enviable brown sound so prized by Fudgeworthy and thus were relegated to the less prestigious Action Black label.

The infamous Fudgeworthy Records, home to all your grindcore, shitcore, noisecore, tardcore, whatever kind of disgusting lowbrow core you could possibly ever need. Founded by a gentleman named Infection Charlie, Fudgeworthy's reign of terror began with the Jesus Chrust 7" in 1990 and ended with the Phillipino black/grinders Kratornas' 7" in 2006. This label was the tastemaker of a degeneration, satiating the socially disenfranchised and mentally borderline mid-late '90's meat(shit)head prevert. G.G., Gonkulator, Meatshits A.C., Captain Three Leg...enough raw noise to keep you whacking your pud for daze. Fudgeworthy indeed.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Lunar Aurora's cycle of insanity has led me to another cycle...of a much different sort admittedly. Legendary German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote Zyklus with the idea of achieving spontaneity within structure..a wholly difficult piece that would separate the men from the boys as it were. It's amazing how Neuhaus pulled it off. Students of percussion should definitely take note.

It's cool that Falconer's getting some play from that new car commercial (as well as are sushi, flight attendants and paratroopers), so I thought I'd post my favorite release from them. Fun as hell power metal with a smooth as shit vocalist, (who was trained in the musical theater)! Sure to please fans of Helloweiners and Lost Horizon.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Dissonance is a tricky thing in black metal, play your cards right and you end up sounding like Semen Datura's 2009 opus Einsamkeit (play em wrong and you end up sounding like any of a number of weak ass LLN imitators). Never content to stay in one register, SD mix it up between atonal thrash riffs, dissonant blasting sections and major chord progressions (sometimes a folk sound will creep in), similar to how Sculptured operated on their last few albums. A strange, creepy, technically proficient album that will keep you coming back for more.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Not to be confused with the numerous other bands named Pest (from Poland, Sweden etc)...Ära is an incongruous mix of rawwar battle chaos and soulfilled acoustic strumming...sounding sort of like Sacramentary Abolishment letting Agalloch jam in their rehearsal space while they go outside and take a smoke break. An idiosyncratic and powerful listen.

It's really a shame that the great Nagelfar called it quits in 2002 after the release of their Virus West album. Fortunately the members have kept busy with various other projects.The Ruins Of Beverast- Foulest Semen Of A Sheltered Elite

Drummer Alexander von Meilenwald was the unstoppable meter by which Nagelfar operated...his obscure ideas have found a home in the intriguing The Ruins Of Beverast (of which he is the sole member)...von M.'s latest release from 2009 Foulest Semen Of A Sheltered Elite (phew, what a title!) recalls the psychedelic weirdness and plod of Sabotage era Sabbath channeled through an old Silent horror film score punctuated by the insane blasting passages that he executed so deftly on Nagelfar albums. Unstoppable.

Kermania is another excellent black metal project of which von M. took part playing drums and lord knows what else. Ahnenwerk is a real piece of werk utilizing von M.'s patented military style rolls and blasts as well as some inventive acoustic work. A formidable black metal album that comes close to capturing the epic feel of old Nagelfar.

Not to be outdone Nagelfar's guitarist Zorn unleashed this enigmatic piece of werk under the Simple Existenz moniker back in 2010. Largely inspired by newer Darkthrone (right down to the decrepit Old West imagery) Das Leben has enough twists and turns to surprise and features strange somewhat uglified vocals by the original Nagelfar vocalist Jander.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

I have to thank my good associate Mr. Sellers (great-godson thrice removed of Peter) for reminding me of this frigid blast of excellence. If you like black metal you will love Old Wainds...if you love black metal you will go APESHIT for Old Wainds, tis simple as that...the title track, Wolves In White, holy shit the whole fuckin album is just tight and buzzy and bursting from the seams with magnificent riffs. And COLD, I musn't forget cold because in terms of sonic approximation of temperature Old Wainds are as adept as Immortal's Battles or Blizzards, which makes sense seeing as they come from Murmansk Russia, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle where January temperatures reach an average low of 7ºF!!